Gothic Ivories Project | Set of writing tablets, 2 registers, bands of rosettes (décor de roses; tablettes à écrire) (Front, outer tablets)

Tablet 1
Register 1: courting couple (meeting of lovers); youth chucking his lovers under the chin; hooded figure observing the scene from a doorway; staff; crenellation.
Register 2: offering of the heart; youth kneeling before his lover; horse; tree.
Tablet 2
Register 1: couple playing chess in a tent; man with his left hand around the pole supporting the tent; lady holding two chess pieces in her left hand.
Register 2: hawking party; lady and youth on horseback; youth with a hawk on his wrist; lady swinging a lure for hawks; tree.
Case decorated with foliated decoration and geometric patterns.

Attribution
Unknown

Reverse
The three inside tablets have recessed front and back. The back of the two outer tablets is also recessed to receive the wax, with a raised border.

Object Condition
Two holes along the edge of each panel, probably to bind the tablets together.

Comments
Only the two outer tablets, forming the 'binding' of the ensemble are sculpted on their external side. Scabbard on the side of the case for the missing stylus.

Provenance
Said to have been found 'in the thatched eaves of a cottage... in the English countryside' by Robert Barnard (b. 1752, d. 1810); by descent to Lucia B. Hollerwith, Washington, D.C. Sotheby's, New York, 31 May 1995, lot 13. Collection of Dr. Ernst and Sonia Boehlen, Switzerland (in 1997).

Bibliography
R. H. Randall, The Golden Age of Ivory: Gothic Ivory Carvings in North American Collections (New York, 1993), p. 123, no. 183.
Images in Ivory. Precious Objects of the Gothic Age, ed. by Peter Barnet, exhibition catalogue, Detroit, The Detroit Institute of Arts, and Baltimore, The Walters Art Gallery, 1997, no. 61.

All images on this website are made available exclusively for scholarly and educational purposes and may not be used commercially.